Of Life and Death
by ooliblikas
Summary: A story of a hospital escapee with a strange ability and the quirky motorist who gives him a lift. RxA


**The Prologue **

The first time it happened was when I was ten.

My sister Namine was two years younger than me and my parents often counted on me to watch over her when we were playing outside. Like any older sibling, it was a responsibility that I dreaded but complied with so as not to get into trouble. Of course, it didn't stop me from teasing her or calling her a "cry-baby" whenever she tried to tattle on my friends or me.

On one of those days, my best friend Hayner and I decided to play in an old tree house behind his house. The structure had been built long before Hayner's family moved in and Hayner's father often made plans to tear it down, but never got around to doing it. As it were, the structure was fairly dilapidated and the fact that it'd held our weight so many times before, was surprising. Of course, we'd been warned multiple times over never to play in the tree house, but it never stopped us. We assumed we were invincible.

I remember that Hayner and I had been able to climb up the old wooden ladder with relative ease. It was from there that we teased Namine, calling her a 'coward' for being too afraid to climb up with us. When she was on the verge of tears, we assumed she was going to tattle on us, but much to our surprise, she started climbing the ladder.

She was almost to the top, close enough that I could reach my hand out and help her up the rest of way. However, as she reached for my out-stretched hand, the wooden plank that had been supporting her snapped in half. She let out a scream as she fell.

Even now, I recall the twisted frame of her small body laying among freshly fallen leaves. Hayner and I had panicked, adrenaline pumping through us as we struggled to climb down the remaining ladder. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I ran over to her and tried to cradle her head to see if she was okay.

Her blonde hair had been matted with fresh blood and leaves, blood oozing from an open wound where the back of her head collided with a rock on the ground. Her left leg was twisted in an unnatural pose and her eyes were glazed over and dull. By that time I had started crying and shouting for Hayner to get help.

I was only ten and helpless, so I did what I'd seen adults do multiple times on television. I put my mouth over hers and tried to breathe air into her lifeless body. I cried and begged for her to come back to me.

And she did. She gasped for air, as if waking up from a horrible nightmare. She panicked, screaming and thrashing as she couldn't remember where she was or what had happened, but was still overcome with an unexplainable fear.

It was almost as if nothing had ever happened, and even later, when she was taken to hospital, they found nothing. No wounds for the blood that stained her hair. No broken bones or even a sprained wrist.

Hayner stopped talking to me after that. I have always assumed it's because we both knew Namine had died there, but I had brought her back.

For a while after that, I assumed it was some strange fluke or medical phenomena. I spent months afterwards grasping for any logical explanation for the event and it wasn't until I started testing out my theory on animals, that I realized that I could bring the dead back to life with just a breath.

But just as quickly as I could grant life, I could also take it.

My first kiss triggered what I can now only describe as a curse. I was thirteen at the time and I had grown fond of one of the girls in the neighborhood, Olette. Truth be told, it was the first time I'd ever had a crush on someone before and at that age, I thought it'd last forever. We'd been hanging out on the swings at the park that evening and it'd been her who kissed me. It had been a moment of bliss, but then it quickly turned to horror. As if being strangled, Olette had fallen from her swing and began to frantically claw at her neck as if trying to remove an invisible bind. I had tried to stop her, to help her, and even call for help, but all I could do was watch as her body convulsed with lack of oxygen before she finally died.

In the same way I had done before, I tried to bring her back, but it didn't work. Even now I can't explain how this curse works. I can't even begin to explain what triggered it after so many years of dormancy.

As one might imagine, no one was willing to believe my story. Olette's death was unexplainable, but it didn't stop the accusations that I had killed her in cold-blood. My ramblings about some "magical" ability didn't help much and many thought I had suffered some psychotic break. In the end, there wasn't enough evidence to convict me, but they did manage to have me committed into a hospital for the mentally ill.

For the last six years, I've wasted away in this godforsaken hospital. I have a plan, though. After all of this time, I think I've figured out a way to escape this hell hole.

Note: The remainder of the story probably won't be written in first person perspective, but most likely in third person. This is more of an opening narration.


End file.
